Education is not being taken seriouly in the U.S.

[Dr Fischer]

I'm newish and I don't want seem like I'm interrupting the cosmic flow, but I need discussion. Anyway to start things off I'm pissed of that America has become this vast pit of stupidity. Anyone else?  

[AlcoholicPancake]

What do you expect? Most of the kids these days get everything they want handed to them, so learn that they don't need to work for anything. Thus making them lazy, and that carries on through their life of education, and they fail.

Education is the most important thing in life, but unfortunately, we don't realize it until it's too late most of the time.  

[Lobo-chan]

Eh, I try hard in school, but then again... I hardly ever study for anything and I still make good grades because... well, I guess I just suck like that... but when it gets to something I'll actually have to study for, I'll most likely be screwed...

But yes, there are a lot of people who don't take education seriously. Hell, I have a friend at another school who doesn't care, flunks pretty much every class, and just goes to school to socialize and because otherwise she'd get in trouble for truancy... but then again, I have some friends who don't do too well in stuff just because they don't get it... Like math and things like that. They try, they're just not that good at it.
*shrugs*  

[Fynn Kilroy]

I agree too, especially since most of my life was spent living overseas, it really put my country in CLEAR perspective.


I'm actually utterly ashamed to say I'm American, because seeing it from a foreigner's POV, we look like idiots.


That's not to say every single teen in America is completely empty brained, but...enough of them are that it looks bad.


And what's worse is that changing this would cause a complete uproar from the parents.


"You're working my daughter/son too hard!" Yeah, well guess what b***h, they work harder everywhere else in the world and they don't complain.  

[Sentama Lin]

To be quite honest I don't think it's entirely the students to blame for this cause of bad education. No Child Left Behind's focus has totally ruined education for so many students and teachers. Schools, rather than teaching how one learns new things and how one applies the knowledge they've gained to change something one wants to change, now teach how to successfully pass a test. Classrooms are no longer places where students synthesize, think, and create new and novel ideas and things; they have become places where students mindlessly absorb information that has no relevance to them.

There is a place for information and basic skills; a few building blocks for foundation is necessary for students in order to continue growth. But students can't just be handed information and merely be tested on it, just to make sure the district gains money. There are higher levels of learning beyond basic skills and testing, and to be quite honest knowledge retention is the lowest level of learning:

1. Knowledge - What Students Know (Recall a fact)
   
2. Comprehension - What Students Understand (Say something in own words)
   
3. Application - How Students Use (Use previous information to do something)
   
4. Analysis - How Students Observe (Troubleshoot A Problem)
   
5. Synthesis - Build and Create New Ideas (Design something, create a book/manual to describe how to do something new)
   
6. Evaluation - How Students... Well... Appraise/Evaluate (Let Students Decide the Best Solution, Explain Why Something Is Better Than Other)
   

Too much of the first two are happening without letting the other levels, which are higher and more fulfilling, have their turn in education. Frankly, one never uses facts alone in the real world; students should be able to use the things they learned to create new methods of solving problems, and using their judgement to pick what is the correct course of action. That isn't being taught at all in so many classrooms in the United States. Not that other countries have that problem, but my educational/pedagogy experience hasn't gone in the International level (since I'm training to be a US Teacher).  

[The Chexed Nut]

Being one who is still in school, I can wholeheartedly agree that I'm just being handed information and expected to study it for a test. Math and science especially, since those seem to be the areas that need the most help. Those specifics are not what my brain can work with; I'm number deficient. For heaven sake's, I still use my fingers to count.

That doesn't necessarily warrent that I be placed under the Needs Improvement section of schools in districts.

Sure, the numbers say that schools are passing, but does that mean that the poor students retain that information? Psh, no. They'd rather learn their basics through videos games than a small-printed book and the boring drones of the teachers. I know I would, for sure.

Personally, I wish there were more schools that specialized in certain subjects. In Vegas, especially, there is only one high school that specializes in languages and arts. Every other high school is more mathetmatics, science and sports concentrated. So, math, science and sports can get you those highly satisfying scholarships for college? Does art not matter anymore? Obviously not, since those are the programs that are being cut due to the economy and poorly monitored budget.

It sickens me, really.

Quote:

"You're working my daughter/son too hard!" Yeah, well guess what b***h, they work harder everywhere else in the world and they don't complain.

They may not complain, but the stress does pile up. Suicide'll definately increase and I wouldn't want to be attending a funeral or two every month because one of my friends couldn't handle the pressure. However, I do agree that parents would complain and protest.  

[Fynn Kilroy]

Chexednut

Quote:

"You're working my daughter/son too hard!" Yeah, well guess what b***h, they work harder everywhere else in the world and they don't complain.

They may not complain, but the stress does pile up. Suicide'll definately increase and I wouldn't want to be attending a funeral or two every month because one of my friends couldn't handle the pressure. However, I do agree that parents would complain and protest.

I didn't mean it in a sense that they'd be so overwhelmed that they'd kill themself (if they were given just a little bit more work, and they killed themself over it, then I call them pathetic!) Only that any amount more work the students would be given--no matter how small or big--would cause an uproar from the parents, as I'm sure we've all seen, anything an American school does causes uproar from the parents.  

[Sentama Lin]

It really depends on what work is given. Call me an idealist (though I'm speaking from a college experience that taught courses this way), but if students were given a workload that was challenging enough for them, and relevant to their interest in the subject area, the students would do them simply because they are interested. Giving students a gawd-awful amount of busy work accomplishes nothing, and only gives headaches for the students and the teachers (personal experience as a teacher's assistant for Calculus, as a student, and as a Music Teacher In Training).

Most importantly, there has to be a clear reason for the work given to students. Meaningless work is meaningless, and isn't realistic since all work in the real world has a purpose for the group that the students work with.  

[God-Raped-Me]

The problem is:

Parents are pussies and won't hit their kids anymore.

People think they have the right to barge in on other people's lives and "fix" problems.

People don't care about anyone but themselves and will do anything to further themselves.

Do you want some more of my thoughts on where society ******** up?  

[Reiku Alche]

Okay, as a student I kinda have to agree. . . But, I'm gonna be biased and keep thinking that I'm not really responsible.

I don't really care much about schooling, but I definitely care about being educated. Schools nowadays are full of s**t and I really don't think they can be depended on without some sort of change. And don't even get me started on how much I hate the way the schools' offices in this state operate. Those a**-hats are out of their vectors.

I agree with Lin that the No Child Left Behind thing really has ruined schools. I don't know too much about the way school is supposed to function, but I can't agree that it is functioning properly right now. The way I've seen it for a long while is exactly that they're teaching me crap just to test me on it.

So far, I've learned everything they've tried to pound into my skull with ease, but I honestly didn't do so much as half of the busy work that they gave me. Why? Because I already learned their information and it doesn't seem like doing a bunch of half-baked Monopoly-paperwork is gonna help me achieve any of my goals in life.

GRM.: Yeah. Society really has gone down the shitter. I'm glad my parents had enough sense to beat me if I really ******** up.  

[Sentama Lin]

Considering that, if we're staying in the United States for now (or, for that matter, any developed country), information is so available (Internet, Libraries, etc.), I really don't think that knowing information is a problem in education. Why in the world would we need to know so much information in school when much of the information we don't care about is forgotten, and the important information is important because it is relevant and used often?

I think it's a better plan to teach students how to use their skills and tools to find the information they need, teach them how to observe and analyze situations for problems, and have them learn about the world and how things work in all subjects of life by having them propose, create, and critique various ways of to make things better.

I know people don't agree with my viewpoint though, but I seriously think a system focused on teaching students to learn for themselves and how to apply the knowledge that they gained themselves is better than a system that forces students to mindlessly absorb knowledge that is so available.  

[Alarias]

I feel that the education system here is a joke.
It's about having passing students so that they get money, it's about doing as much as is needed and no more, it's about killing time until they can push you out into the work force.
I don't think it's anyone's fault in particular (teachers, kids, parents)...it's just the way things are set up.  

[Saverio C.]

Just because we don't do well on the tests doesn't mean we are horrible educators. I remeber reading about a south-east Asian nation sending people over to study how to give kids more critical thinking skills, but that is beside your point. Apathy is in the schools for one reason. School is for losers.

With the rise of the internet fame is but a click away in most people's minds, and I know that if I could become a famous millionaire without school I wouldn't go to school. People see that anyone can make it on the internet and that makes school less important in their minds. This crippled with the fact that popular culture in America hates the nerd. They make the "Gangsta" out to be really smart and the nerd to be a d**k who isn't even the smartest.

This has made the "formula for success"; One internet, one good idea, being popular. School isn't involved in that.

Of course I could go on for hours on how and why Americas "care less" about education, but that is a thesis paper that I don't plan to write.  

[wakusei]

Seems this belongs in In-Depth...anyone else seeing it going that way?

 

[Sentama Lin]

wakusei

Seems this belongs in In-Depth...anyone else seeing it going that way?

It probably belongs there, now that people are starting to talk fairly in-depth about it Waku. :3

Saverio C.

Just because we don't do well on the tests doesn't mean we are horrible educators.

The perfomance on tests say nothing about the general intelligence of a person at all. In particular, standardized tests, in my opinion, have no real leverage on showing to anyone what a person can do. Anyone can retain knowledge and regurgitate it in another form; it takes a good education to actually teach a person on how to apply the knowledge they know to create new solutions for problems they see in their everyday lives - no matter how small. Knowing how to answer a test is not intelligence; when are you ever, in real life, going to ever take a standardized test?

Saverio C.

Apathy is in the schools for one reason. School is for losers.

Rare as this occasion is, I agree with Saverio here. Schools in the United States are no longer relevant to the students that they are charged with educating. Again, what relevance is there with knowing how to answer a test when, in the real life, they'd never be asked to regurgitate information in such a dumb and menial level?

Saverio C.

With the rise of the internet fame is but a click away in most people's minds, and I know that if I could become a famous millionaire without school I wouldn't go to school.

While I think Saverio's opinion on how the general student populace is pretty subjective, he does have the point that the Internet and technology and the wealth of information is so much more relevant to student's minds, and schools are doing nothing to show and teach students how to use this new technology - whether it be for recreation, fame, or for their own intellectual interests (because students have interests; they're not stupid). The Internet and the other sources of information (Libraries anyone?) is a valuable resource and catalyst for new ideas and new messages that students would die to learn to use, but, again, schools are doing nothing. What are kids actually learning when they memorize mindless information? Letting them apply the information for themselves (using the English skills they've learned to send their voice, etc.) helps the students learn more, and application of concepts to create new ideas is a higher level of learning that schools should be acknowledging.

The Internet is a medium for success because of its wealth of information and possibilities. But schools do nothing about this new technology and are stuck teaching in a method that is no longer relevant to the 21st-century student.